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Creating a New Self-Relationship

The moment I found out that I had limited myself to a definition of ‘peace’ in my life that involved running away, escape, and complete removal from my daily environment, was the moment I was asked to really have a look at it. I would like to experience more peace in my daily life, but I have never really taken a step in awareness to actually create it.

After involving myself in a process of self-change about 10 years ago, I have taken many steps in awareness to create things in my life, resulting in a life and experience that is tremendously different from the path I was on back then. In this blog, I want to share an example of how this kind of life creation works for me, how it starts so small and so simply, and how it can seem so insignificant at first, but with a little attention and nourishment, can grow into a real and substantiated way of living.

In this case I was having a look at the word ‘peace’. The action of looking is always the first step for me in the journey of my own self-creation. I immediately saw that I had been living the word ‘peace’ as something that can be attained mostly when I am away, ideally on vacation at a tropical destination with a beach, the ocean, and being faaaar away from work, bills, stress, home and all of daily life.

The first thing I did when I decided to look at this word was to apply a little honesty: this way of living ‘peace’ is unrealistic because I can’t afford to do it regularly, and I simply can’t spend all my time avoiding my real-life reality situation. Also, this would mean that to experience ‘peace’ I would need to spend money, “extra” money I don’t always have, and when I do, I usually end up stressing about it later.

And now a little more self-honestly: ‘Peace’ defined in this way is more like escape. It is a temporary hiding from myself. Even when I do go on vacation I still feel anxieties come up, I still worry, I still judge myself and, for example, my body… I still face concerns and uncertainties the same as I do when I am home. And when I get back, it usually takes less then a week for me to move back into the things I was trying to escape in the first place, because the reality is that I cannot escape from myself, and I cannot escape my own mind.

Is it enjoyable to escape on vacation? Yes! Without a doubt! But is it real? No, unfortunately it is not real peace.

So how do I define real peace? I define it as something substantial that I can integrate into my life at any time, no matter where I am. I define it as peace in mind, being and body, where I understand and am confident about who and what I am in that moment, even if I am not perfect and even if I have made mistakes, I can be at peace with myself and where I’m at.

Now I ask questions: How do I live this? What is the first baby step I can take where I plant seeds of peace within me that I can nourish and grow to develop over time? This is what I did:

I took a look at these questions while I was at work. I brought them up within myself I moments that were the opposite of peaceful – emotional moments of stress, rush, anxiety, pressure and distress- and I had a look at how to create peace in those moments. What I found was if I take a moment for myself to bring the emotion up (instead of pushing it down and moving on with my day), that I would feel it all throughout my body. Yes, it would be uncomfortable to immerse myself into emotional experiences of stress, worry, anxiety, pressure and distress, but I saw I could stabilize myself within that discomfort, and have a look around at what was creating it, and then ask my questions about how I can create peace in these moments.

I saw that in order to create peace, once I identified what was creating the inner turmoil, I would have a look at myself, as a person, and see all the steps I had already taken to support myself within and through turmoil in the past. This helps me to see that I am not so lost and alone as I sometimes feel in moments. I have really stepped up over the past ten years to be there for me, and how rarely do I give myself credit for this process I have walked to support myself? Well, now is the perfect moment to do so. This helps to set the platform for peace, as I really feel that I am here for myself no matter what, and I can depend on me.

The next thing I did was to look at what steps can I take to resolve the current situation. What am I resisting, avoiding or hesitating on? Do I need to make a decision, do I need to take a step? Do I need to re-align my focus? Do I need to take 10 minutes to just go breathe? Maybe I need to do some self-forgiveness, or maybe I need to write something down instead of relying on myself to remember it. All of these have come up for me as solutions at different times, in moments of inner emotional turmoil.

The action of taking the experience into me entirely, looking at it, and scripting a solution for myself, I saw creates a little peace within me. Once I have taken steps to actually walk the solution, I feel even more at peace. At the end of the day, when I take a look back at how I lived that day, at how I stood up with, as and for myself, how I walked a different path than I would have had I continued on with or suppressed the inner turmoil, I can breathe and live that peace that ‘I got this’. This is just my start, it will be a process because some days I do not live my best potential, and so I understand from here it will take time. I am at peace with that.

I can see that over the past ten years I have proven to myself that I am here for me. I have little by little created a self that can take this process of redefining and living words for example, and implement it over time and watch it actually take root and grow in my life. I can see that I can create myself, develop and expand myself in ways that are beneficial to me. I can see that the tools and principles of self-forgiveness and self-honesty along with self-change I use have had a huge impact in my life because when I first heard of them, I could see the common sense and self-empowerment, but when I actually asserted myself to apply the information, I saw real change.

Anyone can do this, but it is not a quick fix. It is a way of life where the minutes, hours, days, weeks, months and years put in to it – time that would be passing anyways – are all moments of opportunity to turn self around and direct self into a way that is really how life should be lived. Where I (self) decide who and how I am in any given moment. I choose the direction, I am at the reigns and steer my ship through the stress, the anxiety, the breakdowns and the build ups, the highs and the lows. I parent myself. I soothe myself. I give myself peace that is real. I find stability.

When I have visible marks from dermatillomania, this is how I feel when others see me:

I feel ashamed

I feel not normal

I feel embarrassed

I feel exposed

I feel disappointed

I feel angry

I feel frustrated

I feel self-pity

I feel scared

I feel vulnerable

I feel like running away/hiding.

When no one sees the marks I feel:

I feel Fine

I feel that I like myself

I feel I want to help myself heal

I feel like it doesn’t matter

Why is it that I experience myself differently when I am alone and when I am with people? I think the common misconception is that it is the people that are causing me to feel these negative emotions. But the truth is that if it exists inside of me, no one put it there but myself. So, in essence, when I am alone, I am better able to hide from those negative experiences that are brought up when I am with other people. When I am with other people I feel like they are judging me for what I have done to myself. However, what I can see is that it has nothing to do with people outside of myself, I can’t know what is going on in their minds. But I do know very well what is going on in my own mind.

So basically, when I am placed in a situation where I am with others, I am being shown how I am in fact judging myself, and what it is that I accept and allow to feel, think or believe about myself already.

The interesting thing here that can be used as self-support is the fact that, when I am with other people, I am more strict with myself. I am more ‘motivated’ to stop and really apply myself due to not wanting to experience these negative things. I can see more clearly what it is that skin-picking is doing to me, my life, and my self-relationship.

So I see that I can make a re-alignment here wherein I stop making it about ‘other people’ and how ‘they’ are making me feel, and instead make it about ME, and how I feel about myself, and how I create a heaviness, burden, tension and stress.

I have walked this point in this blog specifically, and touched upon it in many others, where I see that I have used makeup/concealer/cover up to present a ‘normal’ picture presentation of myself and function in the world normally. This can be like hiding from facing myself, but I see that as long as I am using and applying it IN AWARENESS of what I am covering up and why, I can still bring my reactions back to myself and take responsibility for them. I still know what I do and how I live, and I will not hide that from myself.

What I have seen in terms of these reactions still coming up to this day however, is because deep down, on a much deeper level, I can SEE and I KNOW that I am not applying myself as much as I could be to stop this disorder. I know that I accept and allow it in moments where I am alone and don’t have to face it by reflecting it off of others. I see that I do not push discipline and self-movement when I don’t really have to do it for anyone else.

So here I ask myself, why do I value doing it for others above and beyond doing it for me? Shouldn’t I be the most important reason? Shouldn’t I be even more motivated and disciplined to do it for myself, and then as an outflow of this, be able to be cool and satisfied with myself around others as well? I see that the message I am giving to myself when I do it in reverse, where I do it for others first to avoid feeling bad, instead of doing it for myself first to be able to know that I am stable and doing everything possible to support myself, I am sending the message that I am not as important, not good enough, not worth it. I am saying that I only value myself through others, through their validation of me.

The point and realization here is that I need to start doing this for myself first, not just in my mind as a realization, but in my living actions. Even if it doesn’t feel like it right away, I see that when I push myself for ME, such as in moments where I am alone and I know I can ‘get away’ with it, but I instead decide to stand and take supportive actions and move myself, that those are the most empowering moments on so many levels. Things such as stopping, even after some damage is done, AND being GRATEFUL to myself for stopping, and not just looking at my fall for having succumbed for a moment. Things such as making a commitment and sticking to it, even if I fall or miss a day, to forgive myself and stand back up, showing appreciation and gentleness, cause I am learning. Things like making myself look and feel nice for me, even if I am just alone with myself at the time.

If I don’t do these types of things for myself, I can already see that I will waste so much of my life hiding, isolating myself and diminishing myself in my life and living. This is not the life I would choose for myself, or anyone for that matter. I choose to stand, and I choose to live out the actions that tell me directly that I see and realize that I am in fact worth it, and that only I can bring out that worth that is already inherently there.

This can only be shown and proven to self in living actions, because that is the evidence that what I am saying is for real. I can and have spent many moments up in my mind about how I want to change, value myself and show me that I am worth it, and I can get quite emotional about it. But unless I actually SHOW myself by ACTING on it, creating visible evidence and proof for myself in my life, it will only ever remain in my mind, acting instead as a form of dis-empowerment, because I have realized it, but not taken the initiative to do anything about it. This is where I create shame, embarrassment, hiding, disappointment, sadness, anger, frustration and self-pity, all of the things I feel when I am seen by others. It is not them; it is all me and who and how I decide to be every day.

I have been walking a process for about 4-5 years now where I am practicing living self-forgiveness and learning self-acceptance, self-love and self-understanding in my day to day life. I am doing this by actually forgiving myself, in writing as well as out-loud whenever possible, and letting go of all the burdens, bad habits and self-destructive patterns I had been living out for so long.

Forgiving yourself is not blaming yourself. We are not entirely responsible for the disorders we suffer, as there is a genetic component, an environmental element, and then there is society and the system within which we live, which definitely do not support proper healing and recovery on a daily basis.

Self-forgiveness is the same as making the statement that although there are many contributing factors to the development of a disorder such as OCD (derma, trich, germaphobia etc…), within forgiving myself, I am standing up a taking on that responsibility in its entirety. I am stating that I alone exist within my body, and so I alone, with all the support I can get, am taking responsibility for my own healing and recovery. I am using self-forgiveness to bring myself out of my mind, and to stop the internal conversations, thoughts and reactions that cause the emotional build up inside of me throughout the day, among other things.

Even though we are in fact alone within ourselves, it is always recommended to open oneself up to all the assistance and support we can get, keeping in mind the fine line between being supported and developing a dependence.

Remember SELF-responsibility, no one can do this for us. Seeking and utilizing support is not the same as having someone or something else do it for you – because that is impossible, no one else can ‘fix’ you for you. Support is guidance, it’s someone challenging you or pointing things out you may not have realized. It’s someone talking some sense into you when you are unbalanced and lost in emotions/feelings. It can be someone there to encourage you and push you when you face a fear, or to simply be there to listen to you and show you practical solutions you may not have seen or realized yourself.

Interestingly, within some of the best support I have received, I have found the things I need to hear most are the hardest things to hear. If someone were to say “you need to start taking this more seriously and apply yourself more,” for example, I might get incredibly defensive! I have argued about how much I do already and how hard it is for me, and that they don’t understand what it is I deal with on a daily basis.

But what I’ve learned is that this is what’s called ‘arguing for your limitations’, wherein you find yourself actually arguing and building a defense for why you shouldn’t try harder, you can’t do more, you’re stuck and the situation is unchangeable. This is obviously complete self-sabotage, and sets us up for certain failure.

It is in fact a self-fulfilling prophecy, because if you’re starting point is: ‘I can’t do this,’ then everything that flows from it, and from you, in terms of your actions, words, choices and decisions etc… will only ever end up confirming your starting point of being limited and unable.

What I have experienced is that there comes a time and a point within this process where you realize what you’re doing, because nothing is working and nothing is changing, and the same pattern just keeps on repeating itself. This is the time and the point I reached where I just had to suck it up and say ‘ok, it is time to actually apply myself for real. I started by finding a new starting point, one based in the statement “I am Here to assist and support myself do whatever it takes to manage and/or overcome this.”

Unfortunately, it is not so simple as making a statement. When I am told things that might indicate I actually have to change and step up my application, I look at why I react defensively. Not only with OCD/derma, but with anything that I wanted to improve, such as keeping things tidier at home and applying myself at work. The defensiveness I feel is covering up the fact that I am fearful. I am terrified of letting go of my current way of being and doing. I am scared of my perception of what the change will be like. I am fearful of losing a part of me and of my identity.

It may seem strange, but I’ve discussed this reaction in past blogs, and will go into in more detail in the near future. For now, I see it as a good sign. I see it as a sign that I am building myself up, my stance, my application, my self-will and my self-directive principle, and the disorder is actually feeling threatened. Please read this blog, to understand some dimensions of The Fear of Not Having OCD/derma to depend on.

I have been uncovering quite a few insights within my process of re-defining the word ‘skin’. I had created a list of word associations to uncover exactly how it was that I had defined and thus lived the word skin. I have moved through all the negative association, and in my last post I looked into the first positive association, The word was ‘youthful’, and today, the word is ‘pretty’.

It’s hard for me to fathom a dermatillomania sufferer think of his or her skin as ‘pretty’, but I have had this experience and made this connection with my own skin. Sometimes I might catch a glance of myself in the mirror, and see myself with makeup on, which makes my skin look clear, and I would be a bit surprised. But the interesting thing is that during times where my skin has been clear, at the point where I start to descend once again into the urges, I noticed that inside of myself I would begin to feel disgusting, as in, gross and vile within myself. It’s the point where I would begin to have emotional sensations of self-loathing and internal agitation, irritation, frustration and anger – a buried deep anger that I felt helpless to resolve. And at these times, during these internal storms, I recall some memories of catching a glance myself in a mirror – with makeup on and clear-looking skin- and it would be shocking: I looked… pretty. Inside I felt like a monster, and on the outside I looked like a care-free girl with no problems in the world.

The weird thing is that I felt like that wasn’t me; I didn’t have that as my internal experience; I desperately wanted that to be real and to be me, but it wasn’t, and I would eventually pick, and probe, and squeeze, and scratch, and pull, and pluck. And after all that, I would look in the mirror, blotchy and cut up, and with this spiteful gratitude I would think, “yes, this is who I really am, this is a true expression of how I really feel; this is not a mask, it’s the real me; I have this, I am this, and this best represent who and how I have been and become within myself.” Wow, scary stuff – but I have to ‘go there’ so to speak, or else it won’t change.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to judge my skin and myself as ‘pretty’ when seeing a picture presentation of myself in a mirror or in an image in my mind.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to charge the thought of experiencing myself as ‘pretty’ with a shockingly positive energetic charge of emotions of desire, longing and regret.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to want, need, and desire to be ‘pretty’, to be seen as ‘pretty’, and to see and experience myself as what I perceive ‘looking/being pretty’ might feel like.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to create an idea of what it feels like to be ‘pretty’ with ‘pretty, clear skin’, and then long for the idea I have created in my mind as if it were something I could have or possess as an experience of myself.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to want to escape my personal experience, and to do so through imagining other people’s experiencing and envying them, instead of seeing, realizing and understanding that it is my own fabrication that I am dealing with, my own ideals and imaginings that I created, without considering what other people’s experience might really be like because I can’t possibly consider the multitudinous dimensions and history of events any one else has experienced within their own lives – And within imagining and fantasizing and envying the experiences I can make up in my mind, I am of course not looking at and facing my real self, and sorting out how I can work with myself to change myself.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to want to stop picking my skin from the starting point of desiring the experience of being pretty, instead of from the starting point of equality and oneness within myself, treating my physical the way I would want to be treated. Giving to myself what I need and require fundamentally. Loving and accepting myself unconditionally– because if I can’t do and give and be these things to/for myself, I will not be able to do it to/for others for real, I will not be able to live real dignity and respect, I will not walk amongst others as an equal, and I will not be able to stand as an example for my children or anyone.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to think, believe and perceive that when and as I feel irritated, agitated, frustrated and angry within myself, that the experience is inescapable and will last forever.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to panic and fret when and as I begin to feel irritated, frustrated, agitated and angry within myself, because I don’t want to experience these emotions at all, and so without thinking, I do whatever I can to escape, and I use skin picking because it releases some chemical from my brain, into my bloodstream, which soothes and dulls the intensity of the irritation/frustration/anger/agitation, and it distracts me so utterly and completely, that I submit my directive principle, and allow a disorder to form and take-over.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to fear feeling irritated/angry/agitated/frustrated.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to think, believe and perceive that when I begin to feel irritated/angry/agitated/frustrated, that it will last forever and I will not be able to make it through, instead of seeing, realizing and understanding that it is an internal experience that I create, and it is not bigger or more powerful than me.

The interesting thing that came out of my last blog was the fact that doing self-forgiveness on the ‘positive’ aspects of how I’ve come to define the word skin (and thus how I have created my relationship towards skin/my skin), has actually been a more profound support in terms of how I was able to bring my words in writing into living application more than I am used to.

I had opened up some deeper points in terms of what I am actually losing through picking, and things started to ‘become real’ in a way – more real because I saw how I was losing something I didn’t know I had until I became aware I was losing it. I think it’s because as I was moving through all the negative associations (in my previous blogs), I still felt this distance and separation with my skin wherein I see it as foreign, dry and infected for example. But when I started looking at how I view it also as youthful, pretty and desire, I all of a sudden feel closer to it. I mean, I do deeply want to love and accept my skin. In a way, this desire directly or indirectly feeds the disorder, because as I pick at the skin with such focus and precision, I am doing so within the false belief that I am doing something ‘good’ and ‘beneficial’ for my skin.

It’s true that at times I am destructive and harsh within dermatillomania, but generally it is more of a precise and careful play-out. It’s because I do care about my skin, which is sometimes hard for me to believe. But what I realized existed is this deep care that is something I unknowingly touched on in my last blog, and in touching on it and stirring it thus becoming more aware of it, it turned out to be a force that I have and that I am, within and as which I am able to move myself, such as stopping my sessions in a way I had never been able to do before, within these little ‘breaks’ in the trance where I am able to feel this breeze of awareness, like swift opportunities breezing by as little opening into which I can come through as the self-directive principle of myself and really tell myself to stop.

I will continue with the positive definitions in my next blog, but please visit the archive and read my last blog for context, and compare it with the two before to see the difference between the tone of the ‘negative’ ways I had defined the word skin, and then the positive way.

In my previous blogs I had been looking at the ways in which I had defined my skin, and the relationship which I had thus built with it. These definitions and word associations were mostly negative, like ‘dry’, ‘stretched’, ‘unpredictable’ etc…. but when I looked deeply into myself I saw that I also held seemingly ‘positive’ definitions toward my skin. One would think this would be good and normal, but if you read on, you will see how I took a ‘positive’ word association that I had held about my skin, and over time used it instead to feed the disorder, just like I had done with the negative ones.

The moral f this blog: don’t judge your skin (or yourself) in any way whatsoever. Just don’t do it. Accept the things you cannot change and change the things you cannot accept. Judging in any way only creates a separation between self and one’s body, it creates a standard instead of natural self-expression and rational nurturing, and it also creates hidden reactions of fear and anxiety. Read on to find out how I reached these conclusions using self-forgiveness, and what I plan on doing about it.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to connect the word ‘skin’ to the word ‘youthful’.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to define the word ‘skin’ within the word ‘youthful’.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to separate myself from the word ‘skin’ and from the word ‘youthful’ by defining the word ‘skin’ within the word ‘youthful’ in separation of myself.

I connect the word skin to ‘youthful’ because at 33 years of age, my skin has only recently been showing signs of aging. Up until now it has been young skin – that’s all I know. I remember looking at the skin on my arm once, it was before I had even contemplated picking my arms, it was tanned and smooth and the light was shining off of it, it had a healthy glow to it. I was blown away by how beautiful, firm and youthful it looked. I thought to myself, “that is the way I always wanted my skin to look”. Interestingly, from then on I started picking the skin on my arms, trying to obtain and recreate that perceived perfection. In the end I ruined it. I always say to myself, it’ll heal, it’ll come back… but as I mentioned earlier: at 33, my skin is starting to show some signs, and in reality, our youthful skin does not last forever.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to look at my skin and creating a feeling reaction within myself that my skin is youthful and that this is ‘good’ and ‘right’, because I see, realize and understand that if I place the value of myself into looking youthful, then I am setting myself up for failure, because as we grow older, our bodies age, without exception.

When and as I see myself wanting/desiring youthful looking skin, I stop, and I breathe. I bring myself back to unconditional self-acceptance by reminding myself that my skin and I are on this journey to life together, as one, and age will happen. I will not accept or allow myself to place my precious value outside of Who I am as Life, as a living being that exists Here and Now, and into a picture presentation of what I think I should look like in order to feel happy within me.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to think/believe/perceive that youthful-looking skin will create peace-of-mind within me, because I already demonstrated that when I had judged my skin as youthful, wherein it triggered derma because I began to fear to lose it and obsessively try to make it ‘better’ and ‘more perfect’. I see, realize and understand that I as my mind have created and now cycle the thinking/thought patterns of dermatillomania, and THAT is the issue, not my skin nor my skin’s appearance. I can’t simply switch over to having peace of mind and self-acceptance by altering the way I look. No. I have to actually stop the current patterns of judgment and abuse, and this is doable by investigating the thoughts, accepting myself through forgiveness, and scripting a change.

I commit myself to accept myself the way I am (watch this TED talk about self-acceptance, it’s life-changing cutting edge stuff: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4tkkL9w2pw8), by no longer fooling myself into chasing after youthful looking skin- but instead nurturing my skin as it is, as best as possible.

When and as I see that I am picking at my skin in an attempt to ‘correct’ it or make it look more perfect and youthful, I stop, and I breathe. I bring myself back to reality by reminding myself that what I am doing is having the opposite effect. It is aging my skin, creating flaws and blemishes, and that the faster I stop, the less damage I will do, and I stop immediately, as soon as I become aware of what I am doing.

I commit myself to stop immediately, as soon as I become aware of what I am doing, regardless of the internal energetic experience I will feel: “but I’m not finished”, “but I can’t leave it like this”, “I NEED to do pick this off or else everybody on the street will notice it and look at me”.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to think/believe/perceive that a picking session has a set end time when ‘the task is done’. The task should have never begun in the first place. The task is delusional. The task is only bad and consequential, and stopping is only good for me and beneficial – no matter what way I look at it.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to think/believe/perceive that people in the street will notice tiny little things on my skin. Note to self: get over yourself. Another note to self: What people WILL notice is the mark you leave if you don’t stop immediately, as soon as you are aware.

This is a continuation from my last two blogs where I had been purifying the definition I hold of the word ‘skin’, in order to release that old definition and create a new one which is supportive. This new definition will be one which I can then truly live, to create a new living word, where my actions actually embody the word ‘skin’ as the new definition I have created for it.

What has been interesting throughout this writing process has been discovering how harsh and self-defaming my previously held definition of the word ‘skin’ had been, and how in living that definition, I had been putting myself down, stressing myself out, and completely justifying and perpetuating dermatillomania.

Below is the list of words I had previously connected to the word skin. I have been working my way down this list, firstly by simply forgiving having connected and defined the word ‘skin’ within and as these words, and then I used the tool of self-forgiveness to open up each word connection, to see the reasons behind which I had come to define my skin so harshly.

SKIN

Weak

Unstable

Exposed

Dirty

Scary

Sign of disease

Puss

Irritated

Shameful

Stretched

Dry

Unpredictable

Out of control

Foreign

Embarrassing

Infected

Flakey

Inconsistent

Youthful

Pretty

Toned

Sexy

Desire

I am currently working on the word ‘dry’:

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to connect the word ‘skin’ to the word ‘dry’.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to define the word ‘skin’ within the word ‘dry’.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to separate myself from the word ‘skin’ and from the word ‘dry’ by defining the word ‘skin’ within the word ‘dry’ in separation of me.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to react towards my skin when it is dry because it is uncomfortable and draws my attention to it which creates the conditions within which I will most likely pick and scratch at it. Within this,

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to be drawn into picking at and probing my skin when it feels dry, as if there Is something crucially wrong, instead of simply applying one of the creams or moisturizers that I have on hand for this very reason.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to ignore the fact that when my skin is dry it is usually because I have over washed it in an attempt to fix the damage I’ve done to it, as if I could simply ‘wash it all away’, or in an attempt to prevent or heal any infection because I have created openings in the skin which make it more prone to infection.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to deny the fact that my actions are usually the direct cause for my dry skin, and I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to not want to look at or take responsibility for my actions within and as dermatillomania by replacing ocd actions which do not consider my physical needs, with practical actions (such as applying a cream instead of picking). In other words, when I feel an urge to investigate my skin and start picking, to then take a step back and create some space and awareness for a choice to be considered with regards to what my next actions should be.

I commit myself to open my eyes completely to what I am doing in terms of my actions and the blame-shifting towards my skin, and the denial that this allows, so that when and as I participate in derma, I am doing so within complete awareness of what it is that I am participating in.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to connect the word ‘skin’ to the word ‘unpredictable’.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to define the word ‘skin’ within the word ‘unpredictable’.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to separate myself from the word ‘skin’ and from the word ‘unpredictable’ by defining the word ‘skin’ within the word ‘unpredictable’ in separation of me.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to hold an image of what perfect skin is or should be, and then compare that to my skin and react to the times when this comparison differs. Within this,

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to react when my skin changes for example with my menstrual cycle or changes in diet/rest/stress etc… wherein instead of understanding that my skin is undergoing its own process and processing I blame it for being inconsistent and thus triggering a derma session. Within this,

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to use my skin’s natural processing as an excuse to get mad and victimize myself thus justifying a picking session because that is what I use to escape facing the real reasons why I am feeling upset or uneasy etc… within myself.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to fear the unpredictable inner nature of myself, and to express that fear in skin-picking where I gain comfort and a feeling of control by picking at the skin as if there were something wrong with it and then feeling a great amount of relief when my skin once again heals, which I then interpret as a sign that I am healthy and ‘ok’ physically because I see my skin healing and getting better on its own.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to continuously harm myself because the healing process comforts me.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to look for comfort in the proof that I am not dying or sick by watching my skin heal, and constantly fearing that it won’t heal due to an underlying fear of sickness and death.

When and as I see that I am submitting to skin picking to release the fear of death/disease/dying/being ill, I stop, and I breathe. I bring myself back into awareness by reminding myself that I don’t need to pick my skin to see if I am ill, I can rather do an overall self-scan of my body to see that everything is ok, and if it’s not, I will investigate the point and seek the necessary medical or other intervention if necessary.

When and as I see that I am finding relief in the fact that I see my skin healing on its own, I stop, and I breathe. I bring myself back to self-trust by reminding myself that I don’t need to see physical proof of wounds healing to know that I am healthy and ‘ok’ physically, my entire body is like a monitoring system in terms of my energy levels, my ability to focus, my strength, my appetite, even my stool, etc… are all constant feedback mechanisms that I can monitor and adjust and track and even report to a professional if necessary to make adjustments and record feedback until everything is in balance as my body should be.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to connect the word ‘skin’ to ‘out of control’.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to define the word ‘skin’ within ‘out of control’.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to separate myself from the word ‘skin’ and from ‘out of control’ by defining the word ‘skin’ within ‘out of control’ in separation of myself.

I connect feeling out of control to my skin because sometimes my skin reacts or changes and I don’t know the reason why, and I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to constantly fall into the tendency of thinking about the worst-case scenario that any change or fluctuation in my skin that I can’t explain is a sign of illness or disease and death.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to fear death and disease because they are things that I cannot and will never be able to control, and I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to fear having to face them, and having to face ‘who I will be’ within them, because I feel I will not have control over myself and which parts of me are exposed, thus I see, realize and understand the importance of writing myself out to get to know the inner depths of myself, exposing myself to myself, within and as who I am and have become as the mind and ego.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to fear being out of control because fear there are parts of myself that would come out or be exposed that I don’t like or I don’t want to look at, that I fear others seeing or knowing about even though I myself am not certain about what they are, where they are and thus I cannot look at them and deal with them in any kind of effective way, instead it’s like being afraid of the dark: something could be there, but it could be the imagination, and the imagination usually tends to make a big deal out of nothing.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to keep parts of myself locked away and suppressed underneath a calm exterior, and I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to place a huge amount of importance upon controlling that ‘calm exterior’ so that I can control how I react and even how others react. Within the belief that I can control, or at least influence the situation or interaction I am participating within by controlling myself- not as a true and honest expression of myself, but as ‘who’ and ‘how’ I want to be portrayed, looked at and judged by others.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to want/need/desire to control everything and everyone around me, including myself, all to protect some hidden and feared aspect of myself that I don’t even have a clear awareness of.

I commit myself to peel back the layers of myself so as to slowly but surely look at and investigate the hidden parts of myself, forgive them and free myself from this paranoia.

When and as I see that I am participating in the fear of death and illness, I stop, and I breathe, I bring myself back to reality by reminding myself that my physical is ‘in control’ in that it is constantly ad continuously working towards maintaining its/my utmost potential of health and healing, and I can and will do everything in my power to assist and support it to do so.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to connect the word ‘skin’ to the word ‘foreign’.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to define the word ‘skin’ within the word ‘foreign’.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to separate myself from the word ‘skin’ and from the word ‘foreign’ by defining the word ‘skin’ within the word ‘foreign’ in separation of myself.

I connect my skin to feeling ‘foreign’ because I am so completely separated from my physical body and my skin that I feel that it is not even ‘mine’ or a part of me. I feel as though I would never be as ‘dirty’ and ‘un-pure’ as my skin and physical body, I would only be ‘beautiful and perfect’ because I am able to imagine this in my mind. However, the fact is that my skin and body can and never will be as perfect as I am able to dream of and imagine because they exist in a reality of imperfections and consequence, wherein my skin and body are the accumulation of who and how I have treated them. On the other hand, the images in my mind have been created from the picture perfect airbrushed images I have been exposed to through Hollywood, magazines and television, which is the age old unrealistic standard that nothing can live up to in real life. It’s not real. But my skin is real, it is one of the most real things about me.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to feel or perceive my skin as foreign because I perceived it as ‘less than’ myself, in separation of myself, as if my skin were something other than a part of me. Within this

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to think/believe/perceive that there are foreign things in my skin that need to be removed or extracted because they don’t belong there because they are imperfections, whereas I in my mind have deemed myself as ‘perfect’ simply because I can imagine ‘perfect’ in my imagination and I make the assumption that if I were ‘perfect’ I would no longer feel the way I have the tendency of feeling within myself.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to view and perceive my skin as ‘foreign’, like a ‘foreign object’ that needs to be removed whenever there is something inconsistent because I don’t know what it is nor do I understand why it’s there and it bothers me and I begin to think something is wrong because I’m scared because it’s my own skin but yet I don’t understand it or know it or really feel a connection to it. Within this,

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing my relationship to my skin to thus far be one of neglect and abuse, wherein I will live only in my mind, and when things become too overwhelming I simply beat on my skin to feel better. It’s almost in a way like a punishment, which is a point that definitely needs to be looked into.

I commit myself to create an intimacy and self-acceptance with my skin, through writing self forgiveness, self-commitments, and self-corrective application.

When and as I see my skin as ‘disposable’ and not a living part of me, I stop, and I breathe. I bring myself back to my physical by reminding myself that my physical body it in fact the most important thing I am responsible for, as it is my vessel in this lifetime, and without it I would not exist. It is a part of me, and it is me as the living matter of myself.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to connect the word ‘skin’ to the word ‘embarrassing’.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to define the word ‘skin’ within the word ‘embarrassing’.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to separate myself from the word ‘skin’ and from the word ‘embarrassing’ by defining the word ‘skin’ within the word ‘embarrassing’ in separation of me.

I connect my skin to embarrassment because when and as I think people are looking at my skin I feel like they can see through the image/character/mask I put on and play when I am in public, which is confident, easy-going, and laid back – when in reality I feel at times insecure, scared, up-tight, stressful and anxious, which are the energetic experiences within which I tend to pick. When someone looks at me and I think they might see the fact that I have dermatillomania, it shatters the self-perception I have held of myself in one moment, and in that moment I feel small and vulnerable, as if the other person is now somehow above me with authority over how I feel within myself.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to feel embarrassed when people look at my skin, and I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to immediately think/believe that when people are looking at my skin they are seeing things I am trying to hide, such as signs (blemishes) of personality traits that I feel are embarrassing/bad/wrong.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to judge myself for being up-tight, stressed, insecure and anxious, and I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to judge others who demonstrate these traits. Within this,

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to judge ‘stressful, insecure, anxious and up-tight-ness’ as weaknesses that should be covered up hidden and suppressed.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to fear losing my self-definition of being confident, laid-back and easy-going when I think/believe/perceive that others can see through my ‘act’ as and how I present myself to the world, and within this,

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to fear being treated differently if people were to know ‘the real me’ as in all the dimensions of me including those that I hide/cover up/suppress, because if people treated me differently I would then feel different and not know how to act.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to fear change in my world because then my self-definition would be lost and I would feel lost because I have only defined myself based on what is known and seemingly ‘within my control’, and within this I know ‘who to be’ and ‘how to be’, but beyond this is only fear on the unknown.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to fear expansion and self-expansion beyond the reality that I know and feel ‘in-control’ of and within.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to fear losing control.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to fear losing myself.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to have placed a large degree of importance into my self-image, or the image that I present to the world outside myself wherein I want to be viewed a certain way and skin-picking is not a part of this presentation, and so I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to feel embarrassed when I think/believe/perceive that my skin-picking is exposed because I feel that my foundation has been shattered and de-stabilized.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to believe that another person can shatter my foundation instead of seeing/realizing and understanding that it is not the foundation of who I really am, it is rather the presentation I have developed based on the self-perception I have created of who and how I want to be perceived. Within this, I see that the ‘shattering’ experience is not being done unto me by another person, but is taking place entirely within my own mind as I believe myself to be losing a part of myself that I had considered quite important. Within this, I see and realize that I am demonstrating to myself that my self-perception can be shattered at any moment because it is not something real, it is simply an image and idea I have conjured up for myself, of myself and in reality, it is not so important at all.

I commit myself to walk through this reality as I am – currently walking through dermatillomania, therefore currently blemished and flawed – but real and ready to face myself and express myself as I am in the moment, and not the perceived front I had believed I needed to live behind.

When and as I see myself reacting in embarrassment towards my skin, I stop, and I breathe. I bring myself back to Who I Really Am by reminding myself that the image I fear losing is not an important or integral part of me. I see, realize and understand that it is necessary to present ourselves well in this society but that the real substance and matter of myself is not something that can be shattered nor lost, but is here with me in ever breath.